Irises and Chinese Culture Days

Next to Orchids, I’d say Irises are my next favorite flowers.  Their colors and varieties are amazing and beautiful.  Our Missouri Botanical Garden has a wonderful display that you can walk through.  We attended this years Chinese cultures days and …

Springtime

The front door to springtime is a photographer’s best friend. ~Terri Guillemets The Missouri Botanical Garden never fails me and in early Spring, it’s in its glory!  This place is a photographer’s playground.  Here’s just a sampling of nature’s artwork. …

Garden Glow

For the first time, the Missouri Botanical Garden presented “Garden Glow,”  Christmas light display.  We reserved tickets in advance.  We took Beth and Steve, Megan and Nicholas, and Beki.  It was well worth the trip.  They had several beautiful displays as well as an outdoor concert with a DJ in a snow globe.  There were fire pits along the way and hot chocolate stands to help keep warm. 

 

 

Time with Friends

Most of you know, one of my favorite places to go is the Missouri Botanical Garden.  I promised a friend of mine who is moving soon one last visit.  We spent the afternoon with her parents and the kids.  It threatened to rain all morning, but once we got there, it was beautiful. 

Being retired military, I’m used to people coming and going in our lives.  But, it’s never easy and saying goodbye to this family is no exception.  We have grown to love them and their beautiful babies…each a miracle in their own way.  We will sure miss them and hope to see them again.  Our prayers go with you as you begin a new chapter.

 

 

Photo Vacation

Several weeks ago, I got a call from my Aunt Bonnie, who is also a photographer.  She wanted to come spend a week with me.  She was excited, I was excited.  We spent most of the time photographing each other and my mom, visiting sites around town, editing photos, learning how to use her studio lighting kit.  It was awesome to share my love of photography with someone who is as excited as I am! 

 

Our first outing took us to the Botanical Gardens where I helped her understand natural lighting situations and how to meter correctly.  We got some fun photos.

 

We spent the afternoon the next day out at the Sandy Creek Covered Bridge where we played with exposure bracketing and more portrait taking.  We had a blast, laughed a lot!  Another photographer thought I was giving a little seminar.  I’m sure it kind of sounded like that!

 

 

 

Bonnie may have taken this next one…

 

The last on-location photography we did was down in the Soulard district.  Even my mom was getting in on the fun with camera in hand.

 

 

Towards the end of the week, we finally had to call the company that made the transmitter and receiver for the studio strobe lights cause we could not figure out why in the world we couldn’t get them to work.  Turned out to be a malfunction in the parts.  So once we got that worked out, we were finally able to do some in studio portraits.

 

 

 

Gardens in Spring

One of our favorite places to go in St. Louis is the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Every time you go, it looks different.  The landscape is a living canvas.  You can imagine Spring with all it’s beauty is a wonderful time to be there.

Orchids

Did you know that there are over 20,000 species of orchids, more than twice the number of bird species and four times more than mammals.  That’s pretty impressive.  God must have loved these little guys!

I look forward to the Botanical Garden Orchid Show every year.  The display is captivating and beautiful.  I captured a few to share.  There are so many it’s really hard to choose which ones to include.  Wish I could share them all.